“Reviews conducted in the aftermath of the tragic fire in Koszalin are in progress. Today we know that from the 504 escape rooms monitored, only 10 percent complied with safety regulations and 69 of them have been closed for an indefinite period,” statement of the Interior Ministry reads.

There were 1874 violations related to fire safety, with almost half of them related to deficiencies in evacuation procedures.

Last week, five teenage girls died in a fire that broke out in an escape room in Koszalin, northern Poland. Controls following the accident indicated a list of safety violations by the venue’s owner. It led to the government’s decision of a countrywide review of all escape rooms, amounting to just over 1000.

What are escape rooms

Escape rooms have become a very popular form of entertainment in Poland in the past few years.

The concept stems from computer games, where a player had to escape from a locked space by following various clues and solving a series of riddles. The game has been adapted from the virtual to the real world in 2007 in Japan. The first escape room in Europe was opened in Hungary in 2011.